


breaking and entering

by PeachyKeener



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Journalist Harley Keener, Like, M/M, Mafia AU, Mention of guns, This is crack, ambigious morals, im not even gonna lie to you i wrote this and was like, it's pretty funny, its crack taken seriously, mention of serial killers, mob boss Peter Parker - Freeform, no major violence or anything, please read i swear to god its funny, this is c r a c k, this is funny, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29213100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachyKeener/pseuds/PeachyKeener
Summary: To anyone looking into his career, they’d probably curse him out and ask himwhat the fuck was he thinkingwhen he decided that being a professional crime journalist was worth it? Especially when his methods of gathering information were… um… he’d heard his sister call it uncouth, which was fancy person talk for “lacking in manners,” but he was ninety-eight percent certain she just meant “dangerous, immoral, vaguely illegal.”
Relationships: Harley Keener/Peter Parker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 118





	breaking and entering

**Author's Note:**

> This is CRACK but it was absoluetly so much fun to write and also two days late to post 
> 
> thank you to ava for beta reading this for me! 
> 
> Also posting stories on mobile = weird

To be entirely honest, Harley knows what he does is- well. Stupid. For lack of a better word, what he did on a day to day basis was absolutely stupid. To anyone looking into his career, they’d probably curse him out and ask him  _ what the fuck  _ was he  _ thinking  _ when he decided that being a professional crime journalist was worth it? Especially when his methods of gathering information were… um… he’d heard his sister call it uncouth, which was fancy person talk for “lacking in manners,” but he was ninety-eight percent certain she just meant “dangerous, immoral, vaguely illegal.”

Harley genuinely didn’t mind. 

He’d run into the mouth of murderers- four mass murderers, two spree killers,  _ five  _ serial killers- just to get his fix for his next article. Most of the time, he was on the scene directly before the police were, gathering information, being held at gunpoint, getting a blade to his neck. Normal things. When asked on  _ why  _ he did what he did, he’d simply shrug. 

The adrenaline of running into active crime scenes was fun, and besides, when the bad guys were focused on  _ him,  _ they were less focused on any hostages or victims. 

It also made for- pardon his puns-  _ killer  _ articles. 

Creating an entire career just to fuel his adrenaline addiction probably wasn’t the best idea, but he’d only been stabbed like three times, and two of his articles were up for Pulitzers for investigative journalism and he was barely even twenty-one. So it was fine. It was not stupid. Nor was it dangerous. 

Okay, it was a little dangerous, when he did things like… well… like break into the only known safe house of the biggest Italian mafia boss in New York City. 

This is the part where his sister would call him stupid. 

In his defense though, he’d been tracking the Avengers crime family since his first article. Every other serial killer, bank robber, spree killers- they had  _ nothing  _ on the jackpot that was the Avengers crime family. If he could score this story he’d be set for life. Or dead. Either way, he’d be a  _ legend,  _ and his article would win a  _ Pulitzer,  _ and he’d go down in history as the man who brought down the most feared crime group in America. 

So what was Harley supposed to do,  _ not  _ break into the safe house window? Call the cops and let them bust the house? Wait outside like a good little boy and not end up on the mafia’s hit list? Absolutely not. 

The lock on the window finally gave and he grinned under his breath. “You’ve done it again Harls. You’ve done it again.” 

Slowly, he raised the window up, scanning the room for movement or life. Nothing. Figuring it was safe enough, Harley slipped one leg then the other over the seal and into the house. For a second he thought about what he’d do if this was just some random person’s house. Probably get arrested. Pssh, that would never happen. He was never usually wrong. 

Usually. 

Creeping through the room, he took note of every aspect of it. It was clean, well-kept, probably some sort of guest room. The growing fear that maybe he was wrong and that he’d just broken into someone’s house mounted in his chest. 

With nothing else left to lose, really, he opened the door to find a gun pointed directly to his forehead. 

He was either already caught breaking and entering or this was the right house. The pistol gleamed. This was the right house, yeah, yeah it was. 

“Wait-” Harley managed to strangle out, heart racing in his chest as the cold metal pressed to his forehead, before he blinked. Wait a moment. He- he knew the boy on the other side of this gun. 

_ “Peter?”  _

“Harley!” Peter startled, jerking the gun back to his side, eyes widening. “Dude! What the fuck are you  _ doing  _ here!”    
  
“Uhhh…” Saying fuck it, he bit his lip at his old classmate. “Investigating the Avengers crime family? This was supposed to be their base of operations-”    
  
Peter shifted uncomfortably, and it was then that Harley finally looked at him. It’d been a month since they’d met up in person, and two years since they’d had a class together every single day. As far as he knew of Peter’s usual style, science pun t-shirts, sweatshirts, the occasional button up. Not a- Not a three piece Armani suit, with the  _ nicest shoes  _ that Harley had ever seen. What the fuck. What the fuck. 

He blinked at his friend. “Hey, so. When you said- when you told me a few months ago, that after you graduated college- you’d be taking over the family business. You meant like- you meant like, legal family business. Right?”    
  
“I mean-” Peter shifted, hiding the gun behind his back. “There’s a legal aspect to it?”    
  
“Peter. Peter Benjamin Parker. Are you- are you in training to be the head of the  _ fucking Avengers crime family?”  _

The older boy winced hard. “In my defense, you um, you never asked what I was taking over.”    
  
“Oh my god.” Staring at the his friend, he raked his mind for every single time he had rambled about this case to him, all the times he had said things that would  _ definitely  _ get him on the mafia’s hit list to him, every time he had thought Peter was a goody two shoes. “Oh my god. Does this mean you have to kill me now?”    
  
“What?” A horrified look crossed across his face, “No! No way- I- I was actually gonna tell you, eventually, after I- listen, I’m not gonna kill you. Why would you think I was gonna kill you?”    
  
Harley kept staring at him, before slowly gesturing to the open window and the still loaded gun in his hand. “Take three guesses.”    
  
“No- okay, okay, come on,” Peter placed the gun on the dresser casually and Harley stared at it. The other boy just rolled his eyes, grabbing his hand. “We’re going to the lounge- I guess I have some things to explain.”    
  
His head was literally throbbing with questions, but he let Peter drag him through the house. He noted how  _ lived in  _ the base felt. Like it really was a  _ home.  _ There were photos doting the walls of people that Harley vaguely recognized- Tony Stark of Stark Industries, Peter’s uncle Ben,  _ Notorious Mass Murderer Clint ‘hawkeye’ Barton,  _ a picture of young Peter on his aunt’s shoulders, a few of a old cabin, one of  _ him  _ that peter had taken back when they'd been in photo-journalism together,  _ Black Widow Killer Natasha Romanov,  _ some more of young Peter- and the entire hallway was littered with things that made it feel like this place was loved. Keys on the hallway table, a knife by the lamp, shoes by the front door. Normal things. 

They made their way to a standard living room set up, and Peter pulled him towards the couches. He shook his head. “Absolutely not. I’m not sitting down until you explain to me what the hell is happening?”    
  
“Okay, um-” Peter sat, fiddling with his hands slightly, eyes looking away from his. “Um. Remember how in freshman year, I had all the same classes as you?”    
  
“Yeah?”   
  
Peter looked guiltier as the seconds ticked by. “My uncle asked me to keep an eye on you, because you’d already busted two prominent serial killers- which, we agreed with! We thought that was great- and you mentioned wanting to bust us. I just, um, didn’t expect you to be  _ you-”  _

“Wait. Pause.” Holding up a hand, he waited till Peter met his eyes, “We met because you decided to stalk me?”    
  
“At first? Then I kinda just liked college- which is why I stayed even when you dropped out, besides, I like- you aren’t exactly a threat to the organization, I was, I was gonna tell you about  _ this,  _ anway.”    
  
“You were gonna tell me?”    
  
“Of course I was,” Peter’s ears turned pink, and Harley’s gut twisted with butterflies. “I like- I had- don’t make fun of me.”    
  
“We’ll see.”    
  
“I had a big plan to get you to fall in love with me so I could ask you out and then I was gonna tell you as soon as possible.”    
  
The wind was knocked out of him for a second, and he just blinked at his friend- well. He blinked at Peter. It was true enough that he had a  _ minor  _ crush on him, what with his curls, and brown eyes, and soft smile, and pretty face- Clearing his throat, Harley gave him a look, “And what was I supposed to do when I found out?’    
  
Peter’s face fell even further into guilt, slumping. “I don’t know. I like- I know it was a lot to hope for, but I liked you so much, and I don’t know, Harls, a part of me always thought that you found the whole mafia thing  _ cool.  _ So I- I- I should’ve known better because it’s completely against your morals, what  _ I do  _ is completely against your morals, and you’ve been trying to expose us for years-”    
  
His heart pounded. This could go one way or another and Harley… took the gamble. Slowly he pressed forward, taking Peter’s hands softly. “I’m not gonna expose you now that I know it's you. I’m gonna pin it on a worse mafia group you just- you gotta point me which one I need to expose.”    
  
“What?” Head snapping up, brown met blue and Harley was very much remanded why he liked Peter so much. “You mean- but- the things I do in the mafia is completely and totally wrong morally and-”    
  
That was fair but… he was an adrenaline junkie. He found himself in worse and more dangerous situations than Peter Parker with a gun on a day to day basis. And maybe he didn’t necessarily like the killings or drugs aspect of the mafia, but… 

Slipping into Peter’s lap, he pressed a kiss to his- boyfriend’s?- lips, “I dunno- my uh, my morals are pretty ambiguous.”    
  
Peter’s breath caught in his throat and the other boy kissed him back hard, as if he wasn’t sure this reaction was really real. But it was, and Harley would kiss him again and again and again until he realized it was. 

Breaking into the house of the most feared crime orginizaion in America turned out to not be so stupid after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can hit me up at Peachy-Keener on tumblr or leave a comment down bellow!


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